American University of Beirut

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​FAS faculty members are invited to submit proposals for funding to support their research projects and creative endeavors, such as: attending training programs and workshops; participating in exhibitions and performances; travelling; conducting archival or field research; disseminating scholarly and pedagogical products; meeting with collaborators; etc​.

Eligibility: FAS faculty members​

Budget: Up to $4,000

Application ​materials: Apply online. Please upload in a single PDF file: 1. Proposal including abstract (no more than 200 words), description of the proposed activity and expected outcomes (no more than 1000 words), budget and budget narrative (indicating the anticipated use of the requested funds and all funds sought or secured from other sources), and timeline; and 2. Official correspondence from hosting institutions/organizations, when available.

Application deadline: October 30​; March 15

Contact: [email protected]​​

2025-26

• Digestive Enzyme Activity and Soy Bean Meal Digestion of Marbled Rabbitfish (Siganus Rivulatus)
  Imad Saoud, Department of Biology
  
  The present work was performed to assess 
  digestive enzyme presence and activity in the digestive system of wild marbled rabbitfish (Siganus rivulatus), and also to try to understand why S. rivulatus do not efficiently digest soybean based diets. We also investigated how digestive enzyme activity differed between wild and aquacultured fish. Wild rabbitfish were trapped off the Beirut beach in June 2018 and transported to the aquaculture research facility at the American University of Beirut. An initial gut sample of the fish was removed and freeze-dried within 24 hours post catch. The remainder of the fish were cultured in outdoor round tanks and their guts collected after one month and one year of being fed a commercial formulated diet. Activities of protein, lipid and carbohydrate digestive enzymes were detected in the wild caught fish. Activity of trypsin was particularly high. Activity of some digestive enzymes in the foregut, midgut and hindgut were significantly altered after the fish were offered a commercial formulated feed for a month. Trypsin and chymotrypsin activities in fish fed the commercial diet increased significantly as compared to wild fish after one month of feeding, but amylase and lipase activity were not significantly affected even after one year of feeding. Digestive enzyme activity varied among gut sections, with trypsin and chymotrypsin being relatively high in the mid and hindgut sections and aminopeptidase higher in the foregut. Results suggest that digestive enzyme activity in the various gut sections of marbled rabbitfish change with diet and time. Furthermore, enzymes needed for the digestion of soybean meal and most proteins including soy protein concentrate are present in the gut of S. rivulatus.

• Generic Ploynomials and Modular Forms
  Wissam Raji, Department of Mathematics
  
  In my research visit to Temple University, I will be working with Igor Rivin to continue to investigate period functions associated with half-integer weight modular forms and their cohomology structure that I started last summer. Professor Rivin’s experience in generic polynomials and their properties will be an added value to the project in hand. I will also work with Subong Lim from South Korea on a project related to vector-valued modular forms. 

• Interpreting Liturgy Before the Reformation
  Devan Ard-Keyser, Department of English
  
  This project explores the social, literary, and intellectual functions of liturgical interpretation in England and Europe before the Reformation. This little-studied genre of scholastic and early-humanist inquiry was one of the primary avenues for understanding the symbolic complexity of the liturgy, i.e. the public prayer of the medieval European Church. Starting with the Folger Library's rich collection of printed liturgical commentaries and expositiones such as William Durandus's popular Rationale divinorum officiorum, I seek to offer a new, comprehensive account of this genre. The project combines transcription, translation, and editorial work with close readings of the commentaries as well as prosopographical analysis of book ownership and circulation to understand how these texts were used and by whom. This research aims to nuance narratives that view medieval liturgical complexity primarily as a target of Protestant criticism, instead examining how conflicts over ritual interpretation contributed to the religious divisions of the sixteenth century.

• Invited Talk On Electrocatalysis for Renewable Energy at the American Chemical Society National Meeting
  Lara Halaoui, Department of Chemistry
  
  This grant will support delivering an invited talk to disseminate our research at AUB on the subject of electrocatalysis for renewable energy at the American Chemical Society National meeting in San Diego, March 23-27, 2025. The lecture is part of the symposium entitled “Fundamental Nanoscale Phenomena to Electrochemical Energy Applications” organized to honor Professor Thomas Mallouk, Vagelos Professor in Energy Research and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, for his decades of extraordinary contributions to science and the scientific community. I will deliver a research lecture entitled “Ni-based electrocatalysts for artificial photosynthesis: A dynamic active site dependent on the electrolyte condition, and their coupling to nanostructured photoelectrodes”, that discusses our work on electrocatalysis from earth-abundant metals for water splitting, focusing on doped Ni-based electrocatalysts, sustainability of catalysis and coupling to semiconductor photoelectrodes to store light energy in the high energy density chemical bond. In addition to disseminating our research and participating in discussions on nanomaterials and electrochemical energy applications in this symposium and establishing collaborations, attending the national ACS meeting presents an important opportunity to learn about the latest discoveries in Chemistry and for continued professional development.
  
  
• Privacy-Preserving Multi-Modal AI for Cancer Research: Leveraging HPC and LLMs in the Scottish Safe Haven
  Rida Assaf, Department of Computer Science
  
  This project addresses the critical need for privacy-preserving and ethically sound machine learning (ML) in healthcare. Leveraging Scotland’s Safe Haven, a secure repository of clinical data, it focuses on developing a multi-modal ML pipeline that integrates imaging and textual data for cancer research. The approach combines classical ML with language models to analyze tumor traits, treatment outcomes, and patient conditions while maintaining strict privacy safeguards. 
  Privacy and ethical considerations are at the heart of this initiative. Techniques such as differential privacy, federated learning, and fairness audits will be employed to safeguard sensitive data and mitigate algorithmic bias. Collaboration with interdisciplinary experts ensures that the project aligns technical innovation with ethical and social standards. 
  Expected outcomes include a proof-of-concept pipeline and documented workflows for privacy-preserving AI in healthcare, alongside ethical frameworks to support public trust in data science applications. This initiative showcases how responsible AI can contribute to improved cancer research and broader applications in medical data analysis.
  
  
• Proposal for Partial Funding to Support Research Collaboration with the University of Bologna
  Tania Haddad, Department of Political Studies and Public Administration (PSPA)
  
  This proposal seeks partial funding to support teaching and research activities in collaboration with the University of Bologna. I have been accepted to participate in the Erasmus+ program, which covers partial travel expenses. The funding will mainly support partial travel costs for visiting the Department of Political and Social Sciences and collaborating with Associate Professor Andrea Bassi, who teaches Sociology of the Third Sector. I previously worked with Dr. Bassi on the project “The Future of Third Sector Research: From Theory to Definitions and Classifications,” and we are currently developing a new research project related to citizenship. This trip aims to expand academic partnerships focusing on civil society and citizenship. It will allow me to explore future research avenues and enhance my existing research on citizenship. Additionally, I plan to use the library resources to conduct a comprehensive literature review for my manuscript on citizenship, which will strengthen the theoretical foundations of my project.
  
  
• Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal Annual Issue
  Rima Rantisi, Department of English
  
  Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal (RR) | فم: مجلة بيروت الأدبية والفنية is a bilingual journal based in Beirut and housed at the American University of Beirut. Since 2012, with the support of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as well as the Department of English, RR has published hundreds of previously unpublished works by emerging and established writers and artists in its annual themed issue and webzine to both nurture new talent and highlight contemporary literature and art from the Arab & SWANA region and diaspora. RR gives particular attention to contemporary themes in the major literary genres as well as underrepresented writing and artistic genres such as photo essays, art reviews, comics, translations, and hybrid forms. The journal is edited by Rima Rantisi from the Department of English along with a team of writers and artists from Beirut and the diaspora as well as student interns from the Departments of English, Fine Arts, and Graphic Design at the American University of Beirut.
  
  
• To Speak or Not to Speak: Surviving 9/11 and Beyond in When All Else Fails
  Syrine Hout, Department of English
  
  Similar to recent diasporic Arab American novels, Rayyan al-Shawaf’s When All Else Fails employs codeswitching—the alternation between different languages, dialects, slangs, accents, and registers—to showcase ‘homeness’ for Arab men in post-9/11 America (in Part I titled “Septemberland”) through the lens of Hunayn, an expatriate member of Iraq’s Chaldean community. As an Arab Christian college student with an American accent, he embodies a complex identity. In order to survive, it is crucial for him to speak (up) at times or to commit to silence. Informed by theories of home(land) and of multilingualism/code-switching, as well as by studies of Arab American literature, migrant writings, and identity politics, I argue that the language(s) spoken or used for written communication are identity markers and shapers that carry a weight comparable to those of nationality, ethnicity, religion, and/or physical appearance. For whereas these four categories tend to be stable, multilingual items inserted in both passages and dialogues are manipulated as a means of engendering linguistic play. My focus in this presentation is on Part II, titled “Septemberworld”, specifically on Hunayn’s movements within Lebanon following his return from post-9/11 America. I interpret the ways in which code-switching—that takes place on the levels of various Arabic accents (Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi) as well as three different languages—English, Arabic, and French—helps satirize Hunayn’s ongoing, and futile, attempts at finding/forging a home(land). I will be paying close attention to Hunayn’s own metanarrative comments about both what he says and others do in various settings and contexts. More than any other character in contemporary diasporic fiction, he assumes the simultaneous roles of protagonist, first-person narrator, and implied author (given specially some auto-biographical overtones). I assert that these nuanced overlapping linguistic identities display his marked difference from many Lebanese characters despite their common Arab backgrounds, and that bilingualism proves to be his only proverbial home(land).
  
  
• Transformative Education: Creating Unique Lifechanging Opportunities for the Young Minds and Empowering Tomorrow’s Leaders
  Bilal Kaafarani, Department of Chemistry
  
  Transformative education (TrEd), launched in February 2011 at the American University of Beirut (AUB), is an innovative pedagogical approach established by the Program Director at the author’s institution. TrEd’s primary objective is to put students in the spotlight, channeling ideas from educational theory and acknowledging the potential found within each student. With time, TrEd has flourished into a multifold initiative on the campus of the AUB. Mentoring talks are conducted regularly by renowned speakers that share key moments from their career paths and offer invaluable advice to those in attendance. ChemCarnival is a student-run event that sheds light on the enjoyable side of science, serving as the crown jewel of TrEd’s emphasis on student leadership. Medical research programs and annual chemistry lectureships broaden students’ academic horizons, allowing them to connect with practical research opportunities and distinguished chemists as exemplified by the Medical Research Volunteer Program (MRVP) and the Makhlouf Haddadin Lectureships. The community is further captivated by TrEd’s events, as evident by student-run STEM competitions as well as the captivating events hosted for younger minds. All these initiatives work harmoniously towards achieving the goal of TrEd: promoting a vision for a new world led by transformative leaders.
  
  
• Writer’s Residency and Conference
  Rima Rantisi, Department of English
  
  The writing I do and that informs my teaching is largely personal essays but also present day “historical text,” recordings of the current political and social moment. My book-in-progress, You Were There, Before, is a collection of interrelated personal essays that I seek to finish and publish in the next 18 months. The book explores the liminal spaces residing at the junctions of motherhood, place, bodies, and intergenerational war histories. It is contextualized in Beirut against a contemporary backdrop of political upheaval in Lebanon and the region spanning eight years—as long as the narrator has been a mother—including the continuous War on Terror, the 2019 Lebanese uprising, the ensuing pandemic, Lebanon’s historic economic collapse, a near-nuclear explosion of Beirut’s port, and the war on Gaza and in South Lebanon. As a new mother, the narrator shifts her gaze between place and time from her current home in Beirut to her life and childhood in the US to her parents’ and grandparents’ war past in Lebanon and Palestine to trace how personal and political events play key roles in the intertwining narratives between parents and their children.

2024-25

• Accessing the Middle East: Film Distribution and the Touristic Gaze
  Blake Atwood; Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies​
  
  I am requesting funding in order to begin a new book project titled Accessing the Middle East: Film Distribution and the Touristic Gaze. This project studies the mechanisms, institutions, and politics that enable cinema from the Middle East to find audiences in the United States. It theorizes that politically charged distribution practices encourage American audiences to view Middle Eastern cinema through what I call the “touristic gaze,” a pleasurable but problematic mode of film viewership. Funding will support preliminary research during the 2024-25 academic year. During this time, I will primarily assemble databases of the Middle Eastern films that have been distributed into the United States and the companies and organizations that facilitated their circulation. This is tedious, technical work but important to the richer analysis that will follow. Completing this preliminary research with this small FAS grant will allow me to apply for more significant funding opportunities, including the URB, in the near future.
  
  
• Advanced Soy in Production Diets for Hybrid Catfish (channel x blue cross)
  Imad Saoud, Department of Biology​
  
  This project is designed to promote market pull for the continued inclusion of various soybean meals (traditional and new varieties) by providing science-based practical information for both the farmer and feed mill manufacturers. Data developed in this project is expected to demonstrate the efficacy of traditional soybean meal, new high protein low oligosaccharide variety, and a fermented/enzyme treated soy products. Additionally, we will evaluate the use of corn protein with yeast as a new product that could enhance the performance of soy-based feed through a better balance of amino acids and the inclusion of yeast by products. Overall, the goal is to continue to improve soy-based feeds for catfish. In previous work we found a positive benefit to new soy products and blending them with corn by products with yeast. The proposed work will extend our previous work with channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) to the hybrid catfish (male channel catfish x female blue catfish, I. furcatus) which has become the strain of choice (~52% industry) by US catfish farmers who are the largest user of soybean meal in the US aquaculture industry.
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• Application for Partial Funding Research Projects during Paid Research Leave for Fall 2024-25
  Nabil Nassif, Department of Mathematics
  
  I have been granted a paid research Leave by the university. At that time, my research projects for the leave period included: 1. A visit to the University of Grenoble (Letter of invitation in Appendix 6) to pursue a collaboration with Prof. Faouzi Triki on the following projects: (i) “Identification of Gas Diffusion Coefficients in Polar Firn to Mitigate Climate Change. And (ii) “Calibration of a Tumor Evolution Mathematical Model.” 2. A visit to the University of Aix Marseille (Letter of invitation in Appendix 8) to follow up on a joint project with the Plasma Physics team, headed by Prof. Benkadda on the use of Artificial intelligence (AI) for solving PDE’s and inverse problems in Plasma fusion. Since the approval of my Paid Research Leave, I have received 2 invitations: 3. To the University of Sussex (Letter of Invitation in Appendix 5). 4. To the University of Paris Pantheon (Letter in Appendix 7) who also offer me working facilities while in Paris.
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• Application for Research Projects and Creative Works Support
  Tristan Cyrus Roy, Department of Mathematics
  
  I am submitting a proposal entitled Research Projects and Creative Works Support for funding to support my research projects and creative endeavors. Should I obtain this grant, this would enable me to support my Junior Research Leave for four months, tentatively from September 2nd , 2024 until January 15, 2025. During that time, I intend to be member of the Laboratoire Analyse, Géométrie et Applications (LAGA), Institut Galilée, at the Université Paris III for four months. The primary purpose of this involvement will be to interact with my French colleagues Professor Thomas Duyckaerts and Dr Hatem Zaag Chief Researcher at the Université Paris III. This visit will be a unique opportunity for me to collaborate more closely and advance our research projects. I also plan on attending some seminars at some universities in the Paris region: this will enable me to interact with various experts in my field of expertise and increase my professional network. The grant will support my travel expenses, my transportation costs, and my professional meals.
  
  
• Hawaf et le Sahab Museum//Présence Arabe exhibition
  Kirsten Scheid; Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies
  
  I have been developing research connections with Paris-based art researchers since 2015 and was previously the EHESS Chair sécable. These francophone conversations enhance my awareness of post-colonial art cases, theories, and exhibition experiments and expose me to important histories that parallel those of my Levantine subjects. I would like to attend the “Presence Arabe” exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo/Museum of Modern Art - City of Paris, curated by Morad Montazami, and to participate in the symposia on modern art — “Histoires de l’art au Maghreb et au Moyen-Orient XIXe-XXe siècle” at l’IISMM led by the Joan Grandjean, Silvia Naef, Claudia Polledri et Perin Emel Yavuz) and « Parcours anthropologiques dans le monde arabe » by l’Imaf, led by Dominique Casajus, Christian Phéline, François Pouillon et Mercedes Volait.
  
  
• Master Peace: Artistic Production and Academic Dissemination of the Book
  Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, Department of Political Studies and Public Administration
  
  Based on multi-sited ethnographic research centering on Beirut, but tracing international peace work as far as Switzerland and the United States, Master Peace examines the politics of expertise in the application of metropolitan theories of violence and practices of peacemaking in post–civil war Lebanon. Through ethnographic encounters, archival research, and interviews that shed light on the worlds of academic research, UN agencies, NGOs, and think tanks, the book argues that so-called experts, from violence researchers to peace professionals, have often misrepresented and exacerbated the violence they claim to be tackling, through their deployment of racialized tropes of conflict and communalizing peace practices. The assemblage of these tropes and practices, which the author calls “master peace,” naturalizes social and structural inequalities by collapsing them into supposedly innate cultural and sectarian divisions. Master peace installs unequal relations of domination through the work of metropolitan theories, as in “ethnic conflict” and “failed state,” and practices, such as conflict resolution workshops and crisis reports, converting the radical demand for just peace into a postcolonial regime of dependence on technocratic tools, unaccountable experts, and external donors.
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• Modelling and Performance Analysis of Aerially-assisted Task Offloading Schemes for Intelligent Transportation Systems
  Maurice Khabbaz, Department of Computer Science​
  
  In Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC), the RSU-toVehicle (R2V) task offloading process is highly affected by undesirable yet sometimes inevitable events (e.g., buffer exhaustion, task HoL blocking and deadline expiry), the occurrence of which will notably alter the RSU’s performance in terms of crucial Quality-of-Service (QoS) metrics such as the average system response time, the blocking and deadline expiry probabilities. This research proposal revolves around the development of a novel Aerially-assisted Vehicular Task Offloading (AVTO) schemes with the objective of improving the performance of revolutionary intelligent transportation systems (ITS) service. Precisely, in addition to improving the R2V task offloading performance in terms of the above-mentioned metrics, this proposal aims at revealing novel approaches for exploiting aerial nodes (e.g., UAVs) to assist ground vehicles and RSUs in the task offloading process and, so, shed the light on the benefits stemming from improved Vehicleto-UAV (V2U) communication channel characteristics, reduced signal attenuation, improved throughput, among others; hence, filling an important literature gap. For this purpose, stochastic modelling frameworks shall be established to capture the system’s functional dynamics and assess its performance as it operates under AVTO. Extensive simulations are conducted to confirm the model’s validity and accuracy and then compare AVTO’s performance to that of other state-of-the-art schemes.
  
  
• Numerical Method for Monge-Ampere Equation​
  Ahmad Sabra, Department of Mathematics
  
  This is a proposal for travel support to the University of Sussex to visit prof. O. Lakkis on May 5 for 10 days as per the invitation attached to the application. I have collaborated with prof. O. Lakkis through the Atiyah Fellowship in Summer 2022 and have met again in Summer 2024 during his visit to the workshop organized at CAMS on Inverse Problems and Computational Mathematics. We co-advised two master theses on computational method for Mass transport problem and have a current research project on Galerkin Numerical Method for Monge Ampere equations appearing in geometric optics. O. Lakkis is an expert in numerical methods for nonlinear PDEs and I work on inverse problems in geometric optics. Our research background complements, and our meeting is crucial to accelerate our collaboration.
  
  
• Period Functions of Half-integer Weight Modular Forms and their Cohomology Structure​
  Wissam Raji, Department of Mathematics​
  
  
  In my research visit to Temple University, I will be working with Igor Rivin to investigate period functions associated with half-integer weight modular forms and their cohomology structure. Professor Rivin’s experience in generic polynomials and their properties will be an added value to the project in hand. Moreover, I will work on determining an analogous relation of the twisted elliptic curve L-functions at central values with the modular symbols for half-integer weight modular forms inspired by the definition of the non-holomorphic Eichler-Shimura integral defined by Lewis and Zagier.
  My research is focused on the theory of modular forms. Modular forms were first noticed to explain important arithmetic relations. Their connection with other disciplines of mathematics evolved tremendously and has become the center of attention due to their pivotal role in several conjectures and open problems. I am planning to spend a 2-week research leave at Temple University to work on the research projects related to the zeroes of period polynomials associated with vector-valued modular forms and their connection to cohomology isomorphism theorem for this type of modular forms. The distribution of the zeroes of derivatives of these polynomials as the weight increases seems to have interesting properties. I will be working closely with Igor Rivin on this problem. I am also interested in investigating modular symbols associated with the central values of elliptic curves L-functions of half-integral weight modular forms. I expect to have two papers to be submitted to peer-reviewed journals after my summer trip.​
  
  
• Professional Training Seminar
  Sarine Agopian, Department of Psychology
  
  This trip is for the purpose of attending and participating in the annual in-person seminar as part of an on-going professional training in Existential Analysis Therapy (beginning in December 2022 and ending in May 2026). This program terminates with a diploma earned that is accredited both in USA and Europe. Participation in the seminar as a partial completion of the requirements of the program aims at maintaining and further developing clinical skills for a clinical faculty that directly translate into the classroom experience of clinical courses and other academic clinical activities e.g. graduate clinical case study projects. In addition, participation in this program enhances international connections and faculty visibility, as well as collaboration on manuscripts for publication. One manuscript is already in progress coauthored with the trainer of the program and expected to be submitted for review after the seminar.
  
  
• ZIG Special Issue on Beirut​​
  Sonja Mejcher-Atassi,​​ Department of English
  
  I am participating in this year’s Fellow Club of the Wissenschaftskolleg / Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin where I was a fellow in academic year 2017-18. It’s the first time I am participating in the Fellow Club, primarily to develop my professional relations with other former fellows of the institute. I am staying three additional days, from June 11 to 15, to work on a special issue about Beirut for the Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte that I am coediting with Daniel Schönpflug. The special issue was accepted by the ZIG’s editorial board for publication in winter 2024. It is closely related to my research on archives and focuses on the theme of collecting against the background of Lebanon’s multiple crises. Interdisciplinary in scope, it includes essays by Diana Abbani, Mohammad al-Attar, Yvonne Albers, Layla Dakhli, Elias Khoury, Nadine Panayot, Kirsten Scheid, Jad Tabet, Tania Zaven, Raef Zreik, and myself. We have received most of the essays and are currently in the process of translating and editing them. An in-person meeting in June is key to finalizing this process as well as to putting the last touches to the introduction.​